


Out Of The Blue

by Tanachvil



Series: Aftermath [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Gen, Post Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, Season 8 Coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 19:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanachvil/pseuds/Tanachvil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time Daphne saw her husband he was driving away with a stranger and then he vanished completely. She refused to give up hope, even after a year, and she is still looking for him.  She found him once, she will find him again.</p>
<p>Set during and after the Season 8 finale "Sacrifice".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out Of The Blue

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second story set during the season 8 finale and once again I've decided to focus on the ones left behind.  
> (the timeline for Supernatural is someway messed up because of the missing-years-that-are-not-missing. I tried to come up with one possible timeline for the events here)  
> 

 

* * *

 

The last report comes in when she’s about to leave.  
It’s almost useless, filled with data that doesn’t help at all and doesn’t add a single useful information to the file.

  
The last time they gave her something useful was when they sent her the email from that waitress, days ago. Three different private detectives, all specialized in finding missing people, all quite pricey and with a respectable success rate, but all they could give her, after months, was just an email.

  
_Dear Mrs. Allen,_ it said. _I work as a waitress at BigGerson’s in Denver, and I think I’ve seen Emmanuel there a couple of days ago. I’ll be happy to give you details, through this email or on the phone, but I must tell you that there aren’t many. He just sat there for a while, ordered coffee and then disappeared. I hope it’ll be useful anyway._

Daphne drove all night and found herself having breakfast at BigGerson's in Denver, the morning after.  
It was bitterly ironic how the only proper clue, after all that time, was coming from Colorado, where it all started.   
Her home had been empty for months, now, but the neighbours and one of the PI she had hired kept an eye on it. No one had been seeing anything relevant, nothing even remotely useful had happened, until the email.

  
The waitress was a nice girl, she told Daphne everything she remembered, she apologized profusely for not being able to tell her more and for the two days delay she took to report her sighting.  
She had never noticed the missing person posters until she recognized Emmanuel face on them, she must have passed them every day on her way to work, but she never really looked, until then. The restaurant had been closed for two days, due to something apparently horrible that had happened in one of the revenues in Santa Fe and she had not seen the posters, on the road to work, until two days had passed.

  
There wasn’t really much to say: Emmanuel, or someone who looked a lot like him, had come in the restaurant, ordered coffee, and he just sat there. She didn’t take notice of him walking out, or making phone calls, or talking with anybody. He was wearing a suit and a tan trench coat, he looked pretty normal and was polite and quiet.

 

_“He’s your husband?”_   
_“Yes.”_   
_“He seemed nice.”_  
 _“He is.”_  
 _“I hope you find him.”_

That was all.

 

That is still all, the last clue in a long line of sightings, research and false paths.  
The last report doesn’t add anything, it just helps her focus, summarize, collect her ideas... It just makes her angry, to be honest.

Her husband is gone, as suddenly and as mysteriously as he came, but when he first appeared into her life, things were different. She didn’t want to dig too deep, back then, he didn’t want that either.  
It didn't matter much what he was before she found him or where he came from, he seemed afraid, even, to find out.   
Now it mattered. Now that he was gone, it all mattered.  
  
She had started with his picture, the one she took on their first dinner together, before the marriage, before everything, and she started with the name of the man he had walked away with: Dean Winchester.  
  
She hates Dean Winchester.  
Yes, he had saved her life when the demon had come looking for Emmanuel, but then he took her husband with him and disappeared.  
She wants a word or two with Dean Winchester.  
Of course, that was before her PI gave her the file about him.  
She still wants a word or two with him, but now she would speak with a gun in her hand, and possibly the police on speed dial, because Dean Winchester is a very strange man. He is dead, to begin with, twice, according to the file. He is dangerous, possibly crazy and he vanished with her husband, more than a year ago.

 

The report comes in her email when she is about to leave her house again, after talking to the waitress and having no clue where to go searching next.  
Emmanuel is a ghost, a shadow, his name is just a convention and his face a memory.  
She refuses to believe him dead, not after what she saw with the demon.  
After that, everything is possible.

She saw the eyes of the man turn solid black, when he broke into her house, she saw him dead, after, and she watched that Winchester man taking the body away, just before he came back, as nothing had happened, to take her husband away too.

  
_“I’ll call you when we get there.”_   
_“Be careful. I still think I should come with you...”  
_ _“I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be, either.”  
_ _“How can I? You’ve seen what he’s done. What if he’s dangerous? What if...”  
_ _“Daphne... I don’t know how or why, but I know he means me no harm, and I know he needs my help.”  
_ _“But...”  
_ _“I can see it.”  
_ _“I love you.”_

He never replied. He just smiled and kissed her. He never came back.

  
She prayed, at first, she prayed to God for hours and hours, because if God had given her Emmanuel, then it was God who had to give her a sign, something to begin with, a clue, just a little hope, a nudge in the right direction.

But God was busy, apparently. Or not interested.  
The pastor said she had to keep believing, praying and stay strong.  
It all sounded empty, after a while.   
She lost her faith like you lose a friend who never calls you back when you leave him messages, with anger and regret.  
She stopped praying. She drove, instead.  
From Colorado to Nebraska, then Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, she just drove, leaving a trail of Emmanuel, smiling from black and white posters, behind her.

 

There is nothing new in the report, and yet she reads it all over again, feeling completely empty, in the end.  
She needs to keep going, she just doesn’t know where to.  
It’s almost summer, again, almost two years after her last hiking trip, the one she came back with an amnesiac man with.  
She remembers his blue eyes, staring at her, completely lost. She remembers his thank yous, his apologies, his countless, endless stream of apologies, and she remembers his first proper smile. She remembers him crying and holding his hands, asking him what was wrong and listening to him answering that he didn't know. She remembers the first time he kissed her and how he made her feel important, necessary.  
She remembers his nightmares and how shaken he was afterwards, how he wasn't able to talk about it, even when he tried, even when she tried to tell him that it was alright, that everything was alright and she was never going to leave him. 

  
"Don't leave me..." He had said, that day, when she had pulled him up the river bank, holding his hand, wet and slippery, to help him climb.  
"Don't worry, I won't." she had answered.  
"I don't know what... Who... Please, don't leave me alone."  
"I'm not going to. I'm not."  
It was almost two years ago.

She still has her camping gear and nowhere to be anytime soon.

 

When she reaches the river it’s late afternoon, the trees are quickly eating what’s left of the sun and it will be dark soon. Mounting camp is a train of precise, almost automatic actions that her hands know much too well. It’s like a dance routine, one that brings her back to the days when her father used to teach her how to check for dangerous animals in the proximity, secure the tent, collect wood, and finally enjoy the quietness, the solitude of the woods. It gives her head some space, some peace, and for a while she doesn't think, nor mourn, nor feel anger or worry.

 

When the night comes, Daphne breathes it in, her fire is small and almost just built to keep her company, the river sings, just beyond the edge of the small trees in front of her.   
Starlight makes everything look colder and sharper, there is no moon and no city lights to disturb the sight of Cassiopea, just above her head.

 

There was a time when she would have been frustrated because she couldn’t recognize more than two or three of the stars in the summer sky. Her father used to tell all the names of the constellations, for her to remember, but she always ended up mesmerized and dreamy and never payed too much attention, she regret it, when he died, and she felt angry at the sky.  
Now, she was so angry all the time that the sky looked completely innocent.

  
The stars are just beautiful, now, nothing more, and there is no one, up there, to disappoint or praise, just light and blackness.

And a meteor.  
A falling star.  
 _Quick, Daphne, make a wish..._

She closes her eyes for a second or two, just thinking how silly that is, but doing it anyway.

When she opens them, the meteor is still there, and it’s bigger, brighter, and not alone.

The sky is falling.  
There are dozens, hundreds of meteors, bright orange and white, crossing the night sky, like a storm, like the night is a cloud of fire.  
A meteor shower.

She stands up, looking at the sky with her mouth open. This is once in a lifetime show, she thinks, astronomers must be all excited, probably waiting for this to come for ages and emptying their schedules for tonight years before.  
It’s beautiful.

Until it’s not.  
Because meteors are supposed to burn and dissolve into the atmosphere, and these... whatever it’s happening to these meteors, they are not dissolving.  
She can see the red stripes of light cross the sky, lighting it up like fireworks, she can hear them.

She is too shocked and amazed, for a moment, to notice the one that is coming right towards her, and when she does, it’s too late.

The rumbling noise covers everything and she screams, just a moment before the thing passes falling, flying over her head and missing her, going straight for the river.  
The water rises so high that it splashes the trees all around her, and for a while it feels like it’s raining.   
She doesn’t raise her head until it stops completely.   
The sky is getting dark once more, the last fire drops are falling far away from her and everything is turning silent again.

 

She gets up and runs.  
Everything else is running around her: squirrels and hedgehogs cross her path, and a fox, with her tail puffed and her teeth bare, makes her halt for a second, before they both keep running again, in opposite directions.  
She gets to the river while there are still waves crashing to both sides, splashing and twirling, and a strange vapour is rising from the water, like something incredibly hot was dropped in. The water that touches her feet when she comes to the bank, is warm, like a bath.

Then the man emerges, spluttering and coughing, from the water. He is convulsing furiously, trying to stay afloat and fight the tide.

She doesn’t think, she doesn’t want to. She just toes her shoes, before walking in, shouting “Stay up! I’m coming to get you!”

She doesn’t think, she just walks into the water, colder now, fighting the flow by keeping her feet on the river bed as long as she can, then she swims, just when the man looks like he is going to let go, and she reaches him, grabbing his arm and not letting go until they are ashore.

 

He is breathing heavily, his eyes are wide with shock and strain and he is completely naked.

  
_Oh, you GOT to be kidding me!_

 

She sits there, catching her breath and she thinks that maybe her faith is not so lost, after all, because right now she is so angry at God that she feels like she could punch him, if she had the chance. This got to be the worse joke fate has ever played with anybody ever.  
She just rescued a naked man, fallen down from nowhere, from a river. He even has blue eyes and his hair are dark and messy.  
The similarities couldn’t be more accurate or scary.

 

Of course she doesn’t know how wrong she is.  
Yet.


End file.
